.

There is a question of whether,

For black people,

American experiences can be “ingenuous.”

.

If they are,

Then

Black people

Truly have a home here.

.

Black people in America,

Though,

Typically,

Are the leaders in arts,

.

And for artists,

Experiences are fake,

And their creations offer a foil

Within the realm of “real,”

.

Hence the manifestations at all

And the paradigmatic obviation of creation’s malady.

In your mind

Is a fractal figment

So base,

So infinitesimal,

.

That it

Can naught exist

But in the spotlight and

Among hordes of sweaty animals,

Hoisting protest signs and

Gathering press in

Lashing out against your own natural miscellany.

The gay, bald, shaved-headed man

Walks into the underside

Of the suburban town

And I look at him

 

For the same reason

Why I listen to

The Velvet Underground:

He is the velvet, underground,

 

And

I

Know he will

 

Not bring me down as his

Gait is focused

 

But his mouth is busy

Along the dandelions of the ground and

Everything is renewed.

As a man

I am composed of many layers

And at my core

I must admit lies Kiersten,

As the layers we carry

Every day

As our skin

Wind up morphing

Into

The

Psychedelic stars of another,

Inevitably,

Anyway,

And becoming interchangeable with them.

 

Kiersten was a wiry,

Slender,

Honest woman of 27 in 2011 at McCormick’s

Who gave me the best hug I’ve ever gotten in my life,

A hug that gripped my heart and

Milked out my nectar of adulation,

Which I still hone this way and that as my fire

To this day.

 

I couldn’t precipitate our discourse

But I’ll always remember how she sat there speaking to me

So honestly,

Broke up our pool game with the declaration that

“I have to potty,”

And with headstrong fervor at the end of the night said,

“I think I’m going to take my leave of you,”

With her number by this time in my phone.

 

I can see her walking,

In my mind,

Through town,

With a big purse,

With a head down,

Feeling bad and

I hope something turns it up and

I hope her man sees everything I see.

Not many

But a few

In the past

Have said

“Forget what you know”

Or

“Everything you’ve ever learned is wrong.”

.

Well, the world beats what you know

Out of you eventually,

Anyway,

Which is why people turn a fatal disease

Into a political issue,

To reignite their own vocal chords,

If nothing else.

.

But how’s this:

The religious man is addled,

Tense, skittish and pensive,

Proving that religion doesn’t really help anything,

It only deepens people’s shrouds behind which they hide

In a false attempt to cloak their own maladies,

.

OR,

.

The religious man is going through some SH**,

Some sh** you’ve probably never imagined or seen in your life,

And the religion,

In all its miniscule tarot scents,

Is drops of water from a helicopter on the forest fire,

Is

Better than nothing, for all of us.

How the woman

Seizes your attention

In the center of town in a

Lime green top,

Bronzed,

Exotic skin tone,

.

And how she thrills you when she comes over

And eats what you cooked for her

And talks to you,

With her

Relaxed arms and

Gentle, open palms.

.

You look to her music

For some meaning and it

Dissolves

Under its own

.

Vacuous quest for sex and

She will

Lecherously

Continue

.

To man the center of town,

Will share unfeasible sexual positions on Facebook,

Will post pictures of herself in a bikini,

Posts about coming into the bar and drinking

And having sex with her because you’re her “boyfriend,”

“This could be you,” she says,

A fly gravitating to a pile of shit.

The woman is nothing

Like a rag doll whose existence

You inundate and dominate

Toward procreation,

.

Just look at how she gravitates

To the mean, catastrophic men,

Taking emotional shelter under their primal developments.

.

She feels immense,

Intense physical pain

In copulation and childbirth,

Will shower in any slew of reigning gifts and

.

Will smile a gift of ash at the dissembled horizon,

Take off more clothing to

Light a fire of anger in men,

A fire over which all life is given meaning.

I see your world now

And how

Your sky

Is a canopy of fire and dragons

.

And

So that

Is

.

What you

Give

Back to the world

.

As a natural unfolding

Of the day

Kansas City,

I saw you,

One time,

.

As I climbed a little plateau with

My stretch of I-70 angling to the left

And I LOOKED to the left

To behold the face of the organism

Whose vessels I’d just traversed in auto.

.

You seemed to smile at me

And at the whole country

With a June sunset rubbing your skyline,

To

.

Laugh at

The whimsicality

Of me entering the Western half of the country

Instead of staying and

Entrenching myself in your aura and human portals

And

.

You expressed more to me

Than any person

With his ego,

Time schedule, reticence and disease,

Ever could.